Will Young recalls homophobia he faced before coming out in new book
'How To Be A Gay Man' will be released next year
By Steve Brown
Words: Steve Brown
Will Young recalls homophobia he faced before coming out in his new book ‘How To Be A Gay Man’.
The Pop Idol winner is set to release his part memoir/part self-help book next year and while writing the book, the singer had to revisit traumatic moments of his life.
While speaking to the Insider, Young recalled a moment when he was told that the victims of the 1999 nail bomb attack at the Admiral Duncan ‘deserved it’.
The bomb at the pop gay bar in Soho, London, saw three people die and at least 79 more injured.
Young recalled: “The book contains stuff I had tried to forget or never told anyone about – events like me walking past the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street after the nail bomb went off, and someone I was with saying, ‘Well they deserved it’. Who can say such a thing?
“I wasn’t out then. But imagine trying to come out having been told that – that you’re wrong, everything you feel is wrong and you deserve to die.
“I mean, it is impossible.”
This year marked the 20th anniversary of the attack at the Admiral Duncan and Old Compton Street in Soho was brought to a standstill as Londoners joined friends and family of victims to remember the attack.
The Admiral Duncan was filled with punters enjoying the start of the Easter Bank Holiday weekend when a bomb packed with up to 1,500 four-inch nails tore through the venue on 30 April 1999.
It had been planted by a neo-Nazi extremist who had also detonated devices in Brixton and Brick Lane in the weeks before, in attacks which had intended to target Britain’s black, Asian and LGBTQ communities.
The perpetrator – who hoped to be immortalised by the attacks and who we will therefore not name – was convicted of murder in 2000 and given six concurrent life sentences.
A judge later ruled he should remain in prison for at least 50 years.